


For the Love of Finals

by renegadekarma



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Academy, Academy days, F/M, Fluff, pre-team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 21:38:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1564976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renegadekarma/pseuds/renegadekarma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Simmons wants to do is study the endocrine system.<br/>All Fitz wants to do is tinker with metal and go see the monkey exhibit.<br/>Competition ensues in this Fitzsimmons fic about their Academy Days</p>
            </blockquote>





	For the Love of Finals

It had started sometime before final exams, when Fitz had been too restless to study his textbook and was instead using it as support to one of his newest inventions.

 

“You know, Jemma, I was thinking that we should take a trip after the exams are over,” he had said as he fiddled with a screwdriver and what looked like a warped piece of metal before he twisted it straight once more.

 

Simmons had been sitting in his bed, legs crossed, with her biology textbook open in her lap. She was too busy trying to understand the endocrine system to listen to her best friend, and her response was only a noncommittal hum.

 

 _“Jemma_.”

 

“I’m studying, Fitz,” she replied impatiently, glancing up from a diagram that she’d studiously been scrutinizing. “You should be too, you know. Professor Rider’s mechanical engineering exam is supposed to be extremely difficult.”

 

Fitz scoffed, “You said that about the _last_ one.”

 

” _My_ last exam. You know, Fitz, you’d have it so much harder if you were going to become a biochemist. There’s so much memorization involved,” she replied, quirking an eyebrow up at him. Her textbook was momentarily forgotten in the spirit of competition, lying abandoned on her legs.

 

Fitz frowned, the dimples in his cheeks disappearing for a moment. “Becoming an engineer is just as hard as becoming a biochemist,” he replied, placing down the screwdriver.

 

“I don’t see you studying, and yet you still manage to do well,” Simmons observed with a quirk of her lip.

 

“That’s only because I’m naturally intelligent,” Fitz replied, his voice mockingly smug, and she rolled her eyes at him.

 

“Anyway, what I was trying to say is that we should go somewhere after exams to celebrate them being over. Before we have to fly back to the UK for holiday, we should enjoy something here. We’ve not been to the zoo yet, did you know that?” Fitz continued.

 

Simmons paused in flipping a page as a sudden thought occurred to her. “Alright, we’ll go to the zoo. But just to prove to you that being a biochemist is harder, if you do better than me on your mechanical engineering exam, I’ll pay for tickets. If I do better on my anatomy exam, you’ll pay. Deal?”

 

The Scottish boy’s smile widened. “Deal.”

 

Simmons reached out a slender hand and wrapped her fingers around his; giving him a firm shake before retreating to her book. Fitz turned back to the bit of metal he’d been working with, propping it back up on his textbook.

 

Jemma regarded this action through brown eyes that peeked over the top of the diagram on the adrenal gland. “You’re not going to read your textbook?” she asked after a moment, unable to help herself any longer.

 

“Nope,” Fitz replied, shooting the girl a smirk as he continued tinkering.

 

Their exams were precisely eight days later, both at nine in the morning. Fitz had already hastily shoveled down his breakfast in the dining hall while Simmons had claimed she was too nauseated and nervous to eat. After taking a glance on her diagrams of the excretory system, Fitz had promptly stopped eating toast and claimed to be feeling the same.

 

They’d walked in opposite directions; Simmons to the science hall and Fitz to the engineering building. She waved him off silently, and he mouthed a _good luck_ at her as he walked away. As he turned to the building he was headed to, Fitz’s smile disappeared instantly and was replaced by a thoughtful frown as he finally revealed the anxiety that he’d been hiding.

 

Three hours later, after Simmons had exhausted four pages (front and back) scribbling down an essay on hormones and Fitz had cramped his own hand from using it so much, they met up back again, this time in Simmons’s room.

 

“I’m starving,” Fitz proclaimed, flopping backward onto her bed.

 

Simmons gently prodded aside his legs to clear a Jemma-sized spot beside him, where she perched carefully. “I don’t know how you can even think of eating right now. I’m too nervous for my results.”

 

Fitz turned over onto his stomach now. “When did Professor Hampton say your results would be available?”

 

Simmons chanced a glance at the clock that ticked quietly on the other end of her dorm room. “Tonight, by midnight,” she replied before asking, “Will you be able to see your results at the same time?”

 

Fitz nodded, flopping back onto his back before lifting his head up slightly. “Fancy a sandwich?”

 

“What?”

 

“A sandwich. Y’know, prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella, maybe even a hint of-“

 

“My homemade pesto aioli?” Simmons  finished, the edges of her lips curving upward.

 

“Exactly,” Fitz agreed, getting to his feet and rummaging through the small fridge at the corner of her room before he halted and retreated, repulsed.

 

“Jemma, is that a liver?”

 

“Yes,” she replied warily.

 

“A human one?”

 

“Don’t be daft, Fitz,” she sighed before adding quickly, “I haven’t yet gotten the clearance for that. That’s just a pig’s liver.”

 

“Right next to the pesto aioli,” the engineer grumbled as he pulled out the jar.

***

 

“It’s midnight.”

 

Simultaneously, both Fitz and Simmons clicked _refresh_ on their laptops, eyes flipping between eager and suspicious as they waited with bated breath for their grades to update on the screens they were both viewing from beside each other.

 

A pause.

 

“How’d you do?” Both Fitz and Simmons asked each other in unison.

 

Another pause.

 

Fitz turned his screen so that his best friend could see it; beside his name were three digits: _98.3._

 

Simmons let out a breath and turned her screen toward him: _98.1._

 

“I win!” Fitz declared, pumping a fist into the air and jostling his laptop in the process.

 

“No need to be so smug about it,” Simmons replied, bumping his shoulder with hers as she scrutinized her grades again. “How did you do so well? I heard that his exam was supposed to be impossible,” she asked after a moment, brown eyes lifting to meet his blue ones.

 

Fitz bit his lip. “Well, erm,” he cleared his throat, “I may or may not have built something with my bare hands in the test center rather than write an essay about it?”

 

“Fitz!”

 

“We had the option to!” he defended himself quickly. “Most students choose to take the exam, which is why they do so poorly. Not many of them come prepared with all the equipment they need to construct the other part of the exam.”

 

Simmons gaped at him, “Is that what you were working on last week when I was scolding you for not studying?”

 

His faintly red cheeks confirmed it.

 

“That’s cheating!” Simmons burst out.

 

“It is _not!_ Where was that forbidden in our rules?”

 

“We didn’t have any rules, Fitz.”

 

“Exactly.”

 

Simmons rolled her eyes and sighed. “I wouldn’t have made this bet if I’d known you were going to build something yourself. Anatomy isn’t really my specialty; I would have preferred to compete with you in this if it was microbiology, just so that we were on the same level.”

 

“You still got a lower score than me, though,” Fitz reminded the young woman, unable to stop the smirk that had taken what looked like permanent residence on his impish face. “That means you have to buy us tickets for the zoo.”

 

“Ugh, Fitz!” Simmons sighed before pulling her laptop back up to purchase the tickets online.

 

“Don’t forget the first-class seats to the monkey show,” Fitz suggested helpfully from beside her, and Simmons rolled her eyes at him before obligingly doing as he’d asked.


End file.
